The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri has dismissed a medical monitoring claim brought against the manufacturer of a medical device, finding that the applicable state law permits such a claim only in a true toxic tort case. Ratliff v. Mentor Corp., 2008 WL 3126300 (W.D. Mo.,  Aug. 5, 2008).

Plaintiff Toni Ratliff had a Mentor UB-Tape sling surgically implanted in her pelvis area to treat a condition. She brought a putative class action, including “all persons or entities in the State of Missouri who were treated, implanted or otherwise received the UB-Tape, designed, tested, manufactured, distributed and/or sold by Mentor Corporation.” Excluded from the class were all people with claims for personal injury or wrongful death. She alleged the device caused extrusions, infections and abscesses, often requiring secondary surgical procedures to correct the problem.

The relief sought included a notification, research, and medical monitoring fund for tests to catch those problems. Mentor moved to dismiss, arguing that a medical monitoring claim is not recognized in Missouri outside of the toxic torts context.

The court noted that Meyer v. Fluor Corp., 220 S.W.3d 712 (Mo. 2007) is the first and only Missouri Supreme Court case dealing with medical monitoring claims. It has been cited for the general proposition that Missouri recognizes a claim for medical monitoring. However, in Meyer, children allegedly exposed to lead sued smelter operators to recover damages for the expense of medical monitoring. The Missouri Supreme Court held that the children were entitled to recover such damages under a “medical monitoring claim” that “seeks to recover the costs of future reasonably necessary diagnostic testing to detect latent injuries or diseases that may develop as a result of exposure to toxic substances.” Id. at 716. Thus, by the Missouri Supreme Court’s own definition of a medical monitoring claim, the Meyer decision does not apply to potential latent injuries resulting from anything other than exposure to toxic substances.

The strict holding of Meyer is that, in Missouri, medical monitoring claims are available in toxic tort cases. Meyer does not necessarily support recognition of medical monitoring claims in garden variety products liability cases like plaintiff contended. This explicit limitation in Meyer led the district court to believe that the Missouri Supreme Court would dismiss medical monitoring claims that do not result from exposure to toxic substances.

Although the court did not get into policy issues, MassTortDefense notes that there is a growing recognition that medical monitoring should not be available in the context of drugs and medical devices. The voluntary use of a medical device or medicine prescribed by a health care professional is arguably far removed from the original medical monitoring notion of involuntary exposure to a chemical in the environment. In a case involving HRT, Vitanza v. Wyeth, Inc., 2006 WL 462470 (N.J. Super. Ct. Jan. 24, 2006), plaintiffs sought class certification of a group defined as all persons in New Jersey who had taken the drug Prempro and were not suffering from breast cancer, but who wanted medical monitoring for an alleged increased risk of future cancer. The court dismissed the claim, noting that the state’s recognition of medical monitoring came in the unique context of manifest exposure to toxic substances in environmental tort actions, and was to be applied sparingly. The policy reasons applicable to the environmental exposure context (including the difficulty in proving exposure levels and duration, and even the identity of the chemicals at issue) are not present in the prescription drug context where claimants have access to relevant information through the label, pharmacy records, and their prescribing physician. The need to deter polluters, perceived to be present in the toxic tort context, does not apply to life sciences companies selling a product screened by the FDA.

The absence of these policy factors in a life sciences context was also observed in a recent Vioxx case. Sinclair v. Merck & Co., 195 N.J. 51, 948 A.2d 587 (N.J. 2008). The state supreme court ruled as a matter of law that plaintiffs could not maintain an action for medical monitoring in a pharmaceutical product liability action because they did not allege a presently manifested injury. The court held that the New Jersey Products Liability Act requires present manifest injury and therefore bars medical monitoring unless the present manifest injury element is satisfied. The court also examined prior precedents where medical monitoring was approved, and found those precedents were limited to personal injury stemming from asbestos exposure and exposure to environmental contamination. The majority declined to recognize any common law medical monitoring remedy. See also Parker v. Howmedica Osteonics Corp., 2008 WL 141628, at *5, n.6 (D.N.J.,  Jan.  14, 2008)(applying similar reasoning to device context). Similarly, in Conway v. A.I. DuPont Hosp. for Children, 2007 WL 560502 (E.D. Pa., Feb. 14, 2007), the court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss a medical monitoring claim regarding a medical device used in children with congenital heart defects. The court did, however, note that while medical monitoring was “suitable” in toxic substance exposure cases, the “same argument cannot be made for medical monitoring relief in products liability cases where diseases” are not caused by exposure to toxic substances.